Refiner's Fire

I love art. Thats probably why I majored in it (well, that, and I'm too smart for rocket science...). My art classes in college were my favorite, and one semester I took a metals class. I liked that class because they let me play with a blow torch......ME!!! Yeah, they didn't know me very well at that point. Anyway, our first projects were in copper - copper is cheap. I learned to solder metal - used a blow torch to do that. An ACETELINE blow torch (that means its a really COOL one). something else I learned to do was lost wax casting. That was really cool. I made a ring. What you do is you make the ring out of wax just the way you want it, then you make a cast and heat it up. After its been heated the wax melts away and there is a void in the cast the shape of the ring. I was going to use silver to make my ring, and I was so excited because guess what I got to use?!? You'll never guess! Well, you might guess (torch), because I've slightly hinted (torch) to it a bit already. Yes, I got to use a torch to melt the silver and get it ready to pour into the mold. The silver we used came in little pellets, they looked like BB's and they were pretty expensive. So I got my little silver pellets into the mini cauldron and got the blow torch out and started it up. It was so cool to watch the pellets start to melt. First one melted, then a couple more until they were all melted. But the silver wasn't ready to be cast just yet. Even though it was all melted, the silver itself was dull it wasn't shiny like silver is supposed to be. My teacher told me to keep heating it until I could see myself in it. What? That sounded really weird at the time....but a few seconds later that dull layer burned off the top of the silver and it was like looking into a very strange mirror. It was awesome! It was finally ready to be cast.

I am so grateful that I had that class and was able to go through that process. Sometimes we feel like we are in a furnace thats being heated up. The bible says there are those that he will refine like silver and gold (Zec. 13:9) I might be going through something and He turns up the heat, and feel like I can't take any more, but just a few of my pellets have been melted. And then something else hits and its getting hotter and I know - this is it, I really can't take anymore, but I've still got the dull layer over me. And then something else comes along, and I say God, you have to help me in this - and thats when the dull layer burns away and He says, "Okay, I can see Myself in you - now you're ready."